hey phoenix, don't know much c# but maybe instead of trying to open the file directly maybe you need to set up a request to the server and use the data you get back. I say this because i'm guessing the only place that the file would exist is in your browsers cache after it's been generated server-side.

I have tried to understand kr's suggestion. However I do not know what kind of request I should send, nor how to do it.

I have also tried retrieving the image from a local location on my browser's cache - using both firefox and ie, but cannot locate the image in temporary internet files or any other folders i have checked.

I have read the documentation for URL, URLConnection and HttpURLConnection but I still cannot figure out a solution. I am completely new to this area of programming but have searched extensively on google for suggestions.

If anyone could give me a few pointers I would be very grateful.

Thank you,

junk

-- Sun Oct 10, 2010 6:39 pm --

Hi,

Still stuck here.

I have also tried creating a shell script to download the image but that has not worked out any better.

I have been looking into Adress Bar query strings I might be able to attach to URL objects in Java but have not been able to find an appropriate one.

Even some simple explanation as to why the image cannot be accessed in the same way as /missions/prog/2/ would be very welcome.

I'm not a java user but what I did for this was to login to the site, go to prog 2 and right click on the image. I then saved it into my python folder and ran my program. What's important to note is that when you do try to save the image it wants to save it as a firefox document named 'PNG'. You need to change the 'save as' type to 'all files', then save it with a .png extension: example PNG.png

Thank you for your advice. However, I would love to be able to read the image automatically, if just for the challenge.

My most recent attempt has been this:1) Set up a Socket connection to the ip address of the website..2) through the socket, print a GET request for the file and print a Host header and print enter- I have also tried sending my session id cookie3) when I try to read the subsequent bytestream there is nothing to read

Considering that the above does not work, at all, I hope it is not considered a spoiler.

This approach has worked for me on other websites, but does not work here.

If someone were able to advise me as to why this does not work please let me know. I mean, if I could receive some information as to whether the problem pertains to e.g. the format of the site (.php files for instance) or the site's security, that would be really helpful for me.

I've made a program in PHP that works perfectly, it takes the image, looks for the white dots, looks its number, etc. I get a "possible" answer, but when I tried to do the mission, I got this error message:

i pretty much have a program that takes the png file and processes correctly and all that.. one problem (there always seems to be one of those) that nasty time limit cuts me of far before i can download the image manually so it can be processed by my python script. That said, I'm having a problem getting the image to automatically download. I don't understand why, but you cant download it like /2/image.png it's stored instead like /1/PGN. Even the HTML accesses it by <img src='/2/PGN'></img> =/ so idk wats up.. but I'm sure(and hopeful) you guys will at least point something out that will help

You should be able to solve both of those problems by setting curl opts. The following is from the PHP implementation of cURL. But PyCurl, and other variants, offer the same features, just using a different syntax. You'll need to translate accordingly.